SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL: In Russian director Angelina Nikonova’s absorbing and, at times, quite brilliant feature Twilight Portrait, Moscow has become a place defined by casual brutality. The most mundane act – like, say, ordering a meal at a restaurant – becomes fraught with spite, competitiveness, even hatred. Here, folks are so rude, disinterested, bored, and sullen and mean with each other, it’s like every trace of decency has been surgically removed from their constitution. Horrendous crimes like rape are met with epic indifference. Loyalty is a hostage. Family obligations are a nuisance. Even the cops are crims. Legitimate complaints are met with a wall of loathing. In Eben Bull’s strikingly evocative digital cinematography, the place is a worn metropolis where the colours are muted to a palette of greying dread and the cold hangs in the air like dead dreams. The story does not account for this despair, at least not in a direct way. But as the film unwinds, it’s clear that class, money, and social status divide and rule the psyche of the characters.
What’s transparent in Dihovichnaya’s truly sublime performance is Marina’s pain
As the title implies, this film is not driven by plot but character. At the centre of the picture’s twisty narrative is thirty-something Marina (Olga Dihovichnaya), a social worker of uncommon beauty. (Her looks mark her out for particular scorn in her regular day-to-day encounters.) She is so bored with her nice husband Ilusha (Roman Merinov) that she has a regular sex date with his best friend Valery (Sergei Golyudov). But the sex isn’t very good. Early in the picture, Marina’s friends organise a dinner party in her honour. Marina uses the moment to offer up a speech of such scathing self-hatred that one feels her marriage, and friendships, are demolished in that instant.
The major plot beat in the film is a multiple rape. Three cops assault Marina. Their crime is one of a series; early in the film we’ve seen them do the same thing to a young woman. Later, Marina discovers the ring-leader rapist, a very macho guy called Andrey (Sergei Borisov), whose ideas of law enforcement are distinctly anti-social: 'People should fear cops," he explains to a victim.
Marina tracks Andrey to his squalid apartment block – a distinct contrast to her own neat and stylish digs – and follows him into an elevator. She clutches a broken bottle. But instead of cutting him, she gives him oral sex.
Andrey and Marina begin an affair. She tells her husband that she is visiting her mother; but, in fact, she moves into Andrey’s flat, one he shares with an ailing grandfather (Alexei Belousov) and a much younger brother (Vsevolod Voronov). Andrey dominates them both; never showing any empathy or a stroke of kindness.
In this ugly atmosphere, Marina’s demeanor – which alternates between icy inscrutability and torrid arrogance – warms up considerably. Every so often she tells Andrey that she loves him. On hearing this Andrey becomes enraged. Her affections seem to scorch his soul. The more he retreats, the more Marina insists on putting out these tender feelings"¦
A number of critics have interpreted Marina’s behavior – in the absence of rock solid and clearly dramatised motivations – as an elaborate form of psychological torture aimed at tormenting the man who raped her; revenge pure and simple. Other writers have read the film, which was written by Nikonova and Dihovichnaya, as an elaborate metaphor for modern Russia, or an anti-feminist tract, or pro-feminist parable about reclaiming one’s mind and body, or perhaps more straight-forwardly as a portrait of a woman’s descent into a high functioning form of insanity. All of these lofty interpretations seem possible and valid, but I think the delicate and all consuming mystique of this powerful film can’t be reduced in any way that’s neat and easily digestible.
It’s been said that Marina is 'unsympathetic’ and her actions 'unlikeable’. I don’t think so at all. What’s transparent in Dihovichnaya’s truly sublime performance is Marina’s pain. The film’s story is about how she transforms that pain into a life force. In a more conventional movie Marina would be supplied with any number of redeemers – friends, heroic lovers – that ultimately emphasise her role as 'victim’.
But that does not happen here. Instead, Marina determines her own fate. Fluid in identity, she survives and adapts and, I think, grows. I’m not certain whether Nikonova and Dihovichnaya see Marina as 'heroic’, but watching her transcend her own trauma and the everyday horrors of this terrifying city is deeply moving.
